I had an idea today, and I decided to try it out and see if it would work.

Teachers use Bloom’s Taxonomy to construct assessments for students, but I don’t think students have ever heard of it. I know I never thought to share it with students. And why not? It’s not a great big secret.

We finished studying Macbeth in one of my classes, and so I decided to let the students essentially create the test, which is not a novel idea. Other folks have done that. What I did, however, was share the various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy with the students and ask them to think of questions that they felt addressed each level. We began with remembering or knowledge and reached analysis before the period ended and we had to table the discussion for tomorrow. Here are some of the questions the students came up with in the level of Bloom’s that the students placed them:

Knowledge/Remembering

• How many witches?
• What happened in the play?
• Describe the setting of the play.

Comprehension

• How is Lady Macbeth the more dominant partner in the relationship?
• How should an actor interpret a given passage of the play?
• Give examples of how Macbeth misinterprets the witches’ prophecies.
• Explain how Macbeth changes over the course of the play.

Application

• Show how Macbeth is still relevant to a modern audience (Why do we study it? What can it teach us?)
• Show how Macbeth is similar to a modern teenager.

Analysis

• Compare how Macbeth felt after killing Duncan to how he felt after having Banquo and the Macduffs murdered.
• Why did Macbeth kill Duncan? Banquo? The Macduffs?
• Why did Macbeth listen to the witches?

I think some of these questions are really good and really interesting. I’m not generally a fan of using the lower level questions, and in my mind it is those few knowledge/comprehension questions that are weakest. Beyond identifying how many witches are in the play, it might be more interesting why there are three witches instead of two or four, for instance. I might also have placed some of their questions in other categories. For instance, I think the question about Lady Macbeth’s dominance is more of an analysis question than a comprehension question. Same with the question about Macbeth changing over the course of the play.

Some of their higher order questions are questions I wouldn’t have thought of—showing how Macbeth is like a modern teenager (they mentioned “peer pressure”). I really like the question about why Macbeth listens to the witches.

It was a good assessment of my teaching to hear what the students were telling me they had learned from studying the play. I think it will be interesting to see the assessment that they craft—the assessment that will tell me what they consider important and worth assessing about their study of Macbeth.

photo credit: JJay